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A little baguette fun...

A little baguette fun...

One of the things I love about baguettes is that with just a little manipulation once they are proofed, you can take the "stick" and create an array of dinner rolls that are barely linked: the épi de blé is the obvious example. But recently, after watching a video series called Formes de pains that a TFL member posted (and I can't recall who, so please shout out if you're reading this), I became fascinated with another forme using a baguette shape as the starting point: la margueritte.

So I decided to have a little fun, and instead of just creating my usual two or three baguettes, to play with them a bit.

The impetus was my attempt to arrive at a dough weight that I am happy with for the home baguette; something, in my case, that is maximum 16 - 17 inches long. I've always made 10oz (283.5 g) baguettes, but I'm not altogether pleased. Their girth is more appropriate to a sub roll than a classic baguette. So I decided to go with 8oz (227.8 g) dough weight to see if that produced a slightly more lithe baguette - a ficelle, actually.

Because I wanted to play with the dough more than anything else, I decided to make a straight baguette, essentially using Hamelman's French Bread recipe, but decreasing the hydration to 69% and doing a hand, rather than machine, mix. Bulk fermentation was a little over 3 hours, and folding was done in the container though sets of 8 folds at a time. The initial fold was done 10 minutes after mixing, and then 2 additional folds were made at hour intervals. The dough was divided and preshaped into 3 pieces with a 25 minute bench rest.

When it came time to roll out the baguettes, it was evident that the amount of folding had really increased the elasticity of the dough, even though I had done nothing more than a quick minute-and-a-half mix of the ingredients by hand. So it was necessary to roll them out partially, let them stand another 5 minutes and then finish the shaping.

They were couched for 1 1/2 hours while I preheated the oven to 500 F.

I decided to place them on parchment paper on my peel to make loading more easy, and to construct la margueritte right on the parchment.

As you can see from the picture below, it is essentially a baguette with the tips of each end cut off (they are used to make the little dough ball in the middle which acts like a glue for the structure). It is then cut diagonally into 6 more or less equal pieces, and they are place in a circle with the dough ball in the center. The video for this can be found here. It's quite easy to make and once formed the top is lightly dusted with flour and then each 'ear' is lightly slashed.

The epi, below, is of course simply the baguette shape cut diagonally with scissors with pieces then turned right and then left (or left and then right) and also dusted with flour.

The oven was presteamed using SylviaH's method, and hot water was added to my lava rocks when I loaded the bread and then twice more in the initial 2 minutes. The bake was at 475 F for 21 minutes, and I rotated the breads after 10 minutes to get even browning (made easier by the parchment paper they baked on).

Both la margueritte and the epi create, in effect, separate dinner rolls that are lightly conjoined. It just seems such a unique and conversation-generating way to present rolls that otherwise would be placed in a basket and just passed around a table. The videos present several other interesting ways of manipulating baguettes to create new formes de pains.

The ficelle turned out nicely as well, with its grignes opening up well. Crumb shots below as well.

Gorgeous shaping Larry, and as usual your baguette crumb is what a baguette crumb should look like IMO. I looked at that same post of the various shapes and wondered if you'd seen it as well. I'm glad you did because you've really done them justice with these beauties. Great work Larry!

These look absolutely great Larry. To be honest I'm mostly impressed with the perfect ears on the baguette. This is something I constantly strive for, and I know how difficult it is to produce a baguette as good looking as yours.

@Franko - I'm most happy with the crumb and it's convinced me that I need to rethink my machine mixes at home. I barely incorporated the ingredients by hand, and time and some S&Fs did all the rest. I may try autolyse when practical, and in any event, just barely machine mix and rely on a series of stretch & folds.

@Lindy - Actually, what makes them enjoyable is that the epi and la margueritte are easier to construct than successfully scoring baguettes. Give it a whirl!

Hello Larry, I so enjoy seeing the pictures of your baguettes, and these are a joy to behold.I really like la margueritte (Daisy_A, are you out there? I hope you see this!). Thanks for sharing your method and the beautiful shapes and crumb that resulted.from breadsong

Fantastic way that you get such an even épi and an open bloom on every single petal of the marguerite.

Like breadsong said, Sharon posted Formes de pain. I found that inspirational too - such a great range of shapes.

I posted the following on Ed the Engineer's thread, although they are probably highlighted elsewhere. Also really inspirational in the way Coupes sur baguettes shows an épi and a marguerite being formed at close to production speed.

Bread stand at the end of that video looks gorgeous. Awesome take no prisoners approach to slashing (which they term scarification), also! Part of the excellent boulangerie.net series on You Tube:

So, then, la margueritte is for you. I'm going to ask sharon to post (or allow me to) up the forme de pains series to Videos, and would you mind adding the two you included also! They're fantastic and would expose TFL'ers to these interesting shapes and how they are actually cut. The Youtube production speed videos are great to watch!

I think it would be a great idea to add the formes de pains videos to Videos.

If Boulangerie.net is not there it would be great to add it also. I had thought of this so will add the shaping videos as soon as possible. How would I post to Videos? I thought it might be Forum:Video but am not sure of the pathway. Could you advise? Many thanks.

Very easy, Daisy_A! Look at the top of the TFL toolbar and you'll see Videos listed (between Handbook and Book Reviews. Just copy and paste your post above (or write something new and add the links to it) and it's available for anyone.

Thanks for this! It looked like such fun I made one ..I couldn't get the video to load properly, but I got the gist of the idea. Apparently my petals are upside down..so my 'flower' is a little pudgy :)

Those are gorgeous and makes me drool! Amazing how once you begin to bake your own bread you can smell it, and feel it, and taste it, just from seeing pictures of great looking loaves. I agree, the videos should be available so that they're easily accessible for everyone. Please feel free to post the information - after all, they were produced to be shared!

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